The 100 Best iPhone Apps of 2015

Do you need new iPhone apps? Are you tired of the same old same old? This list of the 100 best iPhone apps is designed to help you find new or new-to-you apps that will make life with your smartphone simply better.

Before you start downloading apps willy-nilly, make sure you've updated your operating system to the latest version (iOS 8.1.3 at the time of this writing). Updating your operating system will ensure that apps run smoothly and that you get all the latest features, you know, the things that make apps great.

If you have an iPhone 6 Plus or iPhone 6, you get to experience a few perks that people with older iPhone models don't have. One is a bigger screen and many apps that take advantage of it. Another is the Touch ID fingerprint scanner (iPhone 5S owners get this benefit, too), which can add a layer of protection to apps that contain sensitive data, like the personal finance app Mint. You can also use Touch ID with one of our favorite password managers, LastPass, to log you into all your other accounts without having to type passwords.

Here at PCMag, my colleagues and I test hundreds of mobile apps each year, writing reviews and sharing helpful tips when we find great ones. So many of the apps on this list have been tested and rated, and when that's the case, you'll find a link to the complete review alongside a one to five star rating.

Other apps on this list come from our own personal use as well as the advice of readers, friends, and colleagues.

Before you check out the complete list of the 100 best iPhone apps, let me address a few frequently asked questions:

100 slides? Are you kidding? Hang on! You do not have to click 100 slides to see the apps in this article. Repeat: do not have to! The slideshow is only one way. Another way is by using the table of contents that appears at the top right side of this block of text. See those links that indicate different groups of apps, such as Information and Entertainment, and so forth? They'll take you to pages with big groups of apps all in one spot. There's also a not-so-secret print button that puts all the text on one page! Genius, I know.

Wait. Haven't I seen this list on PCMag before? You're rather perceptive. The answer is yes, but we update the list frequently to add new apps when we think they're really good, and ditch old ones that aren't that exciting anymore.

You left out some of the most important apps, like Safari, iTunes, and Siri! What's up with that? Technically, Siri is a feature of the operating system—not an app—and those others come preinstalled on iPhones. Seeing as you don't have a choice about owning them, we exclude them from the possible list of the 100 best iPhone apps.

Some of these apps cost money, and I refuse to pay. Give me free apps! You make a reasonable point. How about trying this list of The 50 Best Free iPhone Apps?

Finally, if you know of a great app that isn't on this list, please tell us about it in the comments below, and we'll consider it for future updates to this article. Be sure to give the full name of the app, price, and a short description so other readers can learn about your favorites, too.

Free Google Maps, which was once included with all iPhones, is now an app that you have to download separately—and you should. Google Maps has proven itself more accurate than Apple's own map app, with turn-by-turn directions by car, foot, and public transportation. With Google Maps, you'll see estimated travel times, integration with your Google account for quick access to your home and work addresses (optional), and the ability to rotate the map by pressing two fingers to the screen and twisting them.

Free With more than 30 languages supported and the ability to deliver impressively accurate results most of the time, the Google Translate app is one of the most remarkable programs you can load onto your iPhone. Most people probably won't need it too often, except when traveling or studying a language, but it can be amazingly useful in unexpected circumstances.

Free Flixster isn't just another movie- and theater-information app. Yes, it does list movies with ratings and plots and theater show-times, but it also offers some extras, such as Rotten Tomatoes ratings and social integration. It's a clear, well-designed app that efficiently gets you the information you need to make your movie-viewing decisions and to easily purchase tickets. You can even watch movies right inside the app if you purchase them or already have them in your UltraViolet collection.

Free"What was the name of that movie… the one with Ally Sheedy and Fisher Stevens?" The next time you can't remember the name of an actor, television show, or film (Short Circuit, by the way) IMDb saves the day. One of the handiest reference websites on the planet, IMDb never fails when it comes to looking up anything that has to do with TV, film, or Hollywood. The IMDb Movies & TV app also lets you find which movies are playing at your local cinema, and even purchase tickets. With an IMDb account (free or paid for Pro), the app provides even more features, like the ability to create a watchlist of movies you want to see.

Free
The worst thing you can say to someone you've met before is "It's a pleasure to meet you." The mobile app LinkedIn Connected (formerly LinkedIn Contacts) prevents that embarrassing situation from happening by telling you before a meeting who you're meeting and whether you've met before. The app looks through your calendar, email, address book, and of course LinkedIn, and gives you an impressively quick summary of past communication and friends in common.

Free Weather Underground, our Editors' Choice for iPhone weather apps, succeeds because it sticks to what it does best: clearly presenting lots of hyper-local information in a simple and highly customizable interface. The rich data in this excellent app will keep the most info-hungry meteorology geek satisfied.

Free Half the fun of having a smartphone is looking things up when you're in the middle of a bar bet—and hopefully being right. Wikipedia is the go-to source for fact-checking in the mobile age, and the Wikipedia app usually returns results faster than a mobile search engine.

$2.99 WolframAlpha is like a math and science version of Wikipedia. It's an outstanding source of nerd knowledge and computation about virtually anything, from basic algebra to the depths of the universe. It's like a search engine for algebra, physics, engineering, and so much more—even nutritional information. The app does require an Internet connection to work.

Free There are plenty of apps, both free and paid, for the iPhone if you want a second opinion about the forecast from the stock Apple Weather app. One of the best alternatives is Yahoo Weather. The design is pretty similar to Apple's app, until you begin swiping. It's sleeker, includes a photo from each city or town, and has maps, too.

Free; Premium from $2.99 per month List-making and task-management app Any.do has a unique feature called the Any.do moment that encourages making a habit of reviewing your daily tasks. Geolocation reminders actually work in this app, and it's an overall great app for jotting down tasks and goals.

$3.99As the name implies, Awesome Note (+Todo) is an iPhone app for creating notes and to-do lists. Of all the personal organization apps on Apple's mobile devices, Awesome Note is one of the most visually compelling, letting users choose which colors, background images, fonts, and icons they want to use in their notes. It's a treat to play with all these options, plus the app's graphical calendar, while also being productive.

Free Reasonably accurate and fast, the Dragon Dictation iPhone app cuts the typing out of jotting down a note, drafting an email, posting to Twitter, and a few other light tasks. As a simple dictation app, Dragon transcribes whatever you speak with good accuracy. The app does have some shortcut buttons to push the transcribed text through to Facebook, a new email message, and a few other places, but Dragon Dictate doesn't actually store any notes in the app itself.

FreeThe free iPhone app EasilyDo works as a personal assistant and automation machine. You connect the app to a variety of online services, like your email, calendar, Facebook account, and so forth, and then EasilyDo looks for things it can help you get easily done. For example, a notification might ask you if you'd like EasilyDo to add the contact details of someone who has recently emailed you to your address book. Or it might spot an upcoming birthday of a friend and let you set up a "happy birthday" post to their timeline in advance. It's an amazing productivity app that helps you take care of a variety of tasks quickly and efficiently.

Free Without the Evernote app for iPhone, I'd be a lot less productive while I'm away from my desk. This free, straightforward note-making app outrivals most competing apps thanks to its strong search capabilities and effortless organization. But the real key to its success and popularity is that Evernote synchronizes all your files by saving them to a cloud service, meaning anything you create or alter from your iPhone will be there waiting for you when you log into any other version of Evernote.

Free
Evernote Scannable quickly scans stacks of business cards, notes from a meeting, and documents using nothing more than your smartphone and its camera. It's even faster than Evernote's own in-app business card and document scanner, and it's free to use. It's a keeper and a PCMag Editors' Choice.

Free Google Drive users can access their files with the Google Drive app, but you'll need the Docs app to edit them or create new Word processing documents. The office productivity suite is free to use, and documents created with Google Docs don't count against your overall storage allotment in Google. That's a pretty sweet deal.

Free Similar to the Google Docs app is Google Sheets, another companion app to Google Drive that lets you edit and create spreadsheets. Unlike Microsoft's mobile office apps, Google Sheets (and Drive, and Docs) don't require an annual subscription. If you're a Google Drive user, be sure to download all three apps.

Free The Google Search app isn't really about just searching anymore. It's now about Google Now, which is an included service that delivers personalized information, such as directions to an upcoming appointment in your Google Calendar from your home or office. It also can send you traffic alerts before you leave, and let you know sports scores and game summaries from your favorite teams as they happen. It's a wonderful app that's highly customizable, and it looks sharp, too.

Free 'If this, then that'—shorten that little tag line to ifttt, and you've got one of the best apps on the market. This amazingly simple yet powerful iPhone app can automate just about anything you'd want to do in your digital life: for example, if I add a new contact in Gmail, then save that person's contact information to my Evernote account. If you're turning your home into a smart home, you definitely want to keep the ifttt app on your iPhone, as it can help you manage a range of devices, so that if you get into your smart bed, then the app can turn the lights off for you.

Free
iPhone users who also have a Mac running Yosemite know the simple joy of cross-device syncing. Effortless syncing starts to come apart at the seams, however, when you have other operating systems in your mix, like a Windows computer and an Android tablet. Pushbullet fills in the cracks. It lets you quickly push links, addresses plotted on Google Maps, images, and other information to from one device to another in just a matter of taps or clicks. Pushbullet also pushes other kinds of content if you subscribe to it, like daily cartoons from Cyanide and Happiness, acting something like an RSS reader. It won't replace other syncing services that you might use, but it's good to have for those times when you just want to move one thing quickly from a computer to your iPhone, or vice versa.

Free Timeful is a free iPhone app that helps you find time to do the things you want to do, without crowding out the things that are already on your plate. It connects to calendars you already use to get a sense of what you must do, then it lets you adds new appointments, or even daily habits that you would like to do. It suggests times that might be optimal to complete these tasks you assign yourself and becomes smarter the more you use it because it learns from your accepting or rejecting the suggestions. The result is an app that helps you not only find time to do the things you want to do, but also keeps track of how often you do them, and when.

$19.99 per year; free for users of AVG Family Safety for desktop AVG Family Safety for iOS is a powerful family-friendly browser that blocks all sorts of inappropriate content from young eyes: porn, malware, scams, phishing, and much more. It's an Editors' Choice parental control app for iOS. Parents have two sets of controls, monitoring and filtering, to configure from a remote Web interface. However, if you'd rather not go through the setup, just choose presets from one of four age categories and you're good to go.

Free; Premium account from $29.99 per year Password manager Dashlane puts your login credentials at your fingertips with this iPhone app—and literally if you have an iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus, as the TouchID can be your authenticator. With iOS 8, it has an added capacity to communicate with other apps, making for easier logging in. If you're unfamiliar with Dashlane, it's a password manager with both desktop and mobile apps for syncing your passwords across devices, keeps all your username and password combinations safe. It can generate strong passwords for you. As with any password manager, all you have to remember is one strong password to unlock your Dashlane account, and all your other passwords will be accessible to you to unlock all your online accounts.

FreeIf your files live all over the place—your office computer, home desktop, laptop—having a dependable syncing program is a must. Dropbox, the service that lets you store your files in the cloud and access them from anywhere you have a signal, fills that role nicely with a Dropbox iPhone app. It has a simple interface, easy uploading, and swift syncing across all accounts.

$1 per month The venerable password manager LastPass—a favorite here at PCMag—is one of the top 100 iPhone apps because it lets you access, manage, and create unique passwords wherever you are. The app syncs with other installations of LastPass, such as those on your laptop or desktop computer. Granted, it's a bit clumsy to use, but that's more an issue with the limitations of iOS than problems with LastPass.

Free Google is going full steam ahead releasing iPhone apps, and Google Drive is one of the latest. If you use the free service, there's simply no question that you will want to download the iPhone app so that you can get at your files even faster when you need them. See the next two entries for companion apps you'll want to install as well.

Free Ladies, keep track of your most private calendar—that of your menstruation cycle—in the My Days app. This free app helps you track ovulation, intimacy, and periods. Push notifications are optional, but if you want to know when the "flowers will be in bloom" next, this app will send you subtly worded reminders.

Free RedLaser, an app that turns your iPhone's camera into a barcode scanner, has long been on every new iPhone owner's list of free apps to download. Overtime, the app has only improved, and it's now a multi-functional scanner that works on QR codes, too. When shopping, scan any item with a barcode, and RedLaser delivers detailed information about the product, including whether you can buy it at a better price nearby.

$1.99 If you frequently find yourself firing up the iPhone's built-in timer to measure or track units of time, then the Repeat Timer Pro is a must-download. The $1.99 iPhone app is packed with functionality not included in the default iOS clock timer—a whopping 26 alerts, three independent timers, background functionality with notifications, an interval timer, and more. In short, if you need to time anything—a yoga session, meal preparation times, etc.—this is your app.

Free This simple productivity and business app can spare you countless headaches. The next time you have a document that requires your signature in a hurry, just open it with SignNow, place your John Hancock, and be done with it. The app can open files from email, Dropbox, the Camera app, and other sources.

Free; requires account from $9.99 per monthOne of our favorite file-syncing services, SugarSync, added an iPhone app to its offering in 2011. SugarSync gives you access to your files from a multitude of devices, no matter if you store them on your laptop at home, desktop computer at the office, tablet, and so on. You can use SugarSync to stream music, back-up photos, collaborate on projects, and more.

Free With the release of iOS 8, Apple iPhone users can finally install custom keyboards. One of our favorites is SwiftKey. It lets you type with swiping gestures. You drag your finger around to or near the keys you want, and it figures out what you're trying to say. Typing this way is faster and easier than doing individual key presses. You'll lose the dictation microphone with this keyboard, but it's easy enough to swap back to the stock Apple keyboard by tapping the globe icon in the lower left.

Free The iPhone app Cloze collects tweets, emails, Facebook posts, and other bits of communication from your contacts, and prioritizes them based on people who are most relevant to you. In other words, even if your boss isn't chronologically at the top of your Twitter feed, she will be at the fore of your Cloze view. It's a wonderful tool for getting relevant information about people in your network, and its Web app has even more features and insights to love.

FreeSpeed, better search functions, and color-coded threading make the standalone Gmail iPhone app preferable to the built-in Mail app (where you can access Gmail). The Gmail app for iOS 4 and later, made by Google, gives users another choice for managing email. It allows iPhone users to decide what they value in an email app. Do you value search capability over text displayed at readable sizes? Is it more important for your various email accounts to be managed in one app, as Mail arranges them, or would you rather have a dedicated app just for Gmail that looks more like Gmail on the web, with color-coded threading? The Gmail app searches your entire email so much easier and faster than the pre-installed Mail app.

Free As a new convert to Google Voice, I really love the ability to have another phone number that I can use when I don't want to give out my direct iPhone number. Google Voice lets you screen calls, gives you a free voice-mail system, and also enables free text messaging and calls (among U.S. phone numbers only; international rates vary). The Google Voice app is a great addition to the iPhone.

Free Who among us hasn't felt the sting of a failed delivery in email due to the size of an attachment? Hightail, formerly called YouSendIt, specializes in remedying that problem by allowing users to upload large files to its servers and then share them simply with a generated link. The company's revamped iPhone app lets you not only email large files, but also digitally sign documents and store files in the cloud as well.

Free LinkedIn provides an effective online network for keeping up with your contacts. It's easy to rely on LinkedIn more than your own address book for finding otherwise long-lost colleagues and business partners. Anyone in the job market will want to stay on top of LinkedIn for both its networking aspects and its wonderful database of job listings. It works well on an iPhone, although I like the full-sized LinkedIn iPad app even better.

Free; subscriptions varyMention scours the Web day and night to find new instances of search terms of your choosing and alerts you when it finds them. The search-and-alert program is an alternative to Google Alerts, taking the core concept from that competitor and blending it with social media monitoring tools, resulting in a supremely rich package for businesses or anyone in a branded-persona line of work.

Free Pinterest is a virtual pinboard, but don't be fooled by that description. It's for shopping, and that includes virtual window shopping. Pinterest lets you organize and share all pictures of anything you find online or in your life. With Pinterest on your iPhone, it's easy to snap photos in the real world and upload them to your boards. You can watch what others are pinning on Pinterest, and often, the items are for sale and can be purchased by following a link out to the retailer's site.

Free Skype is one of the best, free communication tools for the iPhone. As of version 3.0, the app lets you make video calls. As with other versions of Skype, you can call or chat with other Skype users at no charge, or buy credit to call any other phone number, landline or mobile.

Free Sexting and security worries aside, the visual chat app Snapchat can be a lot of fun to use—and let me emphasize "fun." Snapchat should not be used as a private and secure messaging app. Rather, it's a simple app that you can use to swap funny, ephemeral visuals with your friends. Messages sent through Snapchat disappear from the receiver's phone after a short time; the sender chooses up to 10 seconds as the limit. Snap a picture, draw or write on top of it if you like, choose the amount of time the recipient can see it, and send away. Just bear in mind that all digital media is reproducible, and that you should never send anything illicit, private, or anything meant to be secure through this entertainment app.

FreeFor a long time, Twitter Inc., the company that owns the 140-character social network, didn't make its own app. Dozens of third parties did, however, but not all the resulting apps were worth using. So when Twitter released its official Twitter app—and it worked well and loaded quickly!—users folded the new tool into their iPhones happily. If you tweet, it's a no-brainer to have this app. If you don't tweet and have been on the fence about joining the masses, the iPhone app makes it easy and convenient to get on board.

FreeVine is Twitter micro-video sharing app, and it is well worth exploring if you've never seen it action before. Some of the most talented video artists on Vine share six-second stop-motion shorts, jokes, sleight of hand tricks, and tromp l'oeil works of art. You can also make and share your own ultra-short videos with the simple interface, although you won't find any editing tools. Part of the charm is in the quick-and-dirty nature of these amateur films.

99 centsWhatsApp remains one of the most popular cross-platform messaging apps on the market, worldwide. If your brother in Shanghai has an Android, and your best friend in Rio has a Blackberry, you can text with them both, practically for free, from your iPhone. WhatsApp bypassing SMS (and all the charges it can rack up) and sends messages to your contacts over Wi-Fi when available (3G, etc., when it's not) so that you don't incur charges. The app is free to download and free to use for a year, but costs 99 cents per year thereafter.

Free This chat app lets you send self-destructing encrypted media and messages over a secure system, proving that you don't have to sacrifice usability for the sake of security. You can send basic text messages, images that you can mark up in the app, and 30-second audio recordings as well. Wickr lets you decide when your messages self-destruct on the recipient's device. The app even has a Shredder features that obliterates every trace of your old messages, for when you want to be super secure.

FreeAddictive as the day is long, 2048 has this simple goal as its end state: create a box with the number 2048. You play by sliding together other boxes of the same number, so that your digits are always doubling. With each slide, a new box appears. The game makes more sense to play than to describe it in words. Download it and give it a try. You'll be hooked.

$3.99 Late last year, Apple named Badland one of the best games of 2013 in the App Store for the iPad. Good news for iPhone owners: Badland works on the iPhone, too. In this ambient game—and headphones are compulsory to the experience—you simply tap the screen to move a floating beast-like creature through the air, and through obstacles, to reach the end of a level. Half the fun is the artistic experience, so pop in a pair of earbuds and immerse yourself in Badland's highly stylized world.

$3.99 If you're open to being challenged and enjoy a good puzzle, Device 6 will make you very happy. Though this game is mostly textual, it's not exactly a "text adventure." It's more an enhanced digital novel, in which you progress amid text that's peppered with moving images (not video) and audio. The story begins with you as Anna waking confused and drugged in a mysterious castle. Following the story involves turning your phone this way and that as the story zigs and zags. It's an unusual game, which is partly what makes it so intriguing to play.

$4.99Monochrome mystery game Limbo sets a small boy in a forest. With no explanation of what to do or where to go, you slowly move him through this other worldly place and figure out what kind of traps and obstacles lie in his path. It's dark and curious, and a wonderful experience of a game. Note: Limbo requires iPhone 4S or later (or any model later than iPad 2, or fifth generation iPod touch).

Free; subscriptions for full access optional Lumosity helps you exercise your mind with daily brain-training games. The company, Lumos Labs, maintains the games and training are backed by research (which you can read and decide for yourself whether you buy into it). Regardless of the science, the games are fun and challenging. In the Lumosity app, you can select different skills you want to improve, such as problem-solving or remembering people's names, and then play a handful of games each day that aim to strengthen those skills. Over time, you'll hopefully see your scores rise, showing cogitative improvements (or at least improvement in your ability to succeed at those particular games). It's free to play, although full access to unlimited brain-training requires a subscription, which run anywhere from a few dollars per month to $299 for a lifetime membership.

$3.99 Monument Valley is a beautiful iPhone game in which you solve cunning architectural puzzles with impossible geometric figures. Each level is as much a puzzle as a work of art, drawing on architectural influences from the Near East, medieval Europe, and Islamic structures. It's a quiet, contemplative game that wraps clever design in a mystery that's worth solving.

Free The New York Times' crosswords puzzle is one of the most-loved paper puzzles in the world. The free iPhone app brings current puzzles and past ones from the newspaper's archives to users…who have subscriptions. But users of the free app who aren't subscribers can now play a daily mini puzzle, a short five-by-five grid with clues that challenge your vocabulary. It's a great app for anyone looking to burn through a daily two-minute puzzle.

Free QuizUp is a quiz game for the iPhone that pits you against international trivia enthusiasts—and your Facebook friends—in fast-paced, multiple-choice games. It's a wonderful social game with a huge range of themes, challenging history buffs, geography whiz kids, language experts, TV and movie fans, and general knowledge know-it-alls to prove what they say they know. (My favorite theme? Name the flag.) QuizUp is a great game, and best of all, it's free.

$2.99 Ridiculous Fishing lives up to its name providing hours of outrageous fun. The game starts innocently enough. You toss your fish hook over the side of a small, retro-pixelated boat. As your hook descends, you avoid the passing fish because as soon as you snag one, your hook starts to ascend. On the way up, the game changes, and now you have to hook as many fish as you can before the line hits the water's surface. The deeper you go, the trickier it gets, until you hook the rare boss-type fish at the bottom of each area.

$2.99 If you obsessively listen to podcasts, as I do, go buy the Downcast iPhone app. It shines with excellent features, smart downloading options, and a great interface. It's worlds better than the stock Podcasts app from Apple (which, as of iOS 8, comes included on your phone with no ability to remove it). Downcast is suited for people who want a lot of control over their podcast listening experience, and it's that fine level of control that makes it our Editors' Choice. My favorite feature: Downcast lets you customize not only how often the podcast catcher checks for new episodes, but also where you are when it does using geo-fencing, e.g., "check for new episodes when I arrive at work."

Free If you like both live radio and curated stations, download iHeartRadio. iHeartRadio manages to capture the radio's spontaneity (complete with ads and annoying DJs), while giving users options to create commercial-free custom stations. It's also a great app for listening to live sports when you want to hear the announcers for your home team.

Download free; requires membership from $7.99 per monthThe Netflix app for Apple iPhone enhances the value of a Netflix subscription by letting you watch movies from its streaming, or Instant, service directly on your handheld device. In the latest version, Netflix has added the ability to rate movies from your smartphone, but it removed DVD (disc) queue management tools, so you'll have to use the Netflix website for that.

Free; optional subscription $9.99 per month Rdio combines a redesigned, easy-on-the-eye interface, quality audio streaming, and lots of options into an iPhone app that music fans will love. If you choose to purchase a subscription to the service for unlimited mobile streaming ($9.99 per month, which also includes unlimited streaming through Roku and Sonos), be sure to do so via the website and not through the app itself.

$5.99 If you hear a song and don't know what it is (or for the life of you, can't remember who sings it)—Shazam to the rescue! Launch Shazam and hold it as close as you can to the speakers, then let her rip. Within a few seconds, the app will tell you the title, artist, and sometimes even find the album art, too. Shazam is a whiz with most radio-play songs, new and old, originals and covers, but it occasionally gets stumped by obscure b-sides.

FreeOf all the music streaming apps in the Apple App Store, Slacker Radio always seems to pound just a few beats harder than the rest. The same outstanding service you'll find in Slacker Radio's online version is on the iPhone and has been for a long enough time for the company to have massaged the interface and performance to the point that you can appreciate it audibly.

Free; Premium subscription optional Another excellent music-streaming service, Spotify, formerly had a lot of lock-down features in its iPhone app for people who were not paying subscribers to the service. Not so any more. A recent update to Spotify's iPhone app now allows anyone to listen to an artists, playlist, or album in shuffle mode (and with intermittent audio ads). Premium subscribers paying $9.99 per month can listen to their playlists in the order they create, and save playlists offline, too, all without encountering advertisements.

FreeTired of Apple's Podcast app? Try Stitcher instead, an alternative way to manage your podcasts. It has good controls for organizing groups of podcasts and limiting how many episodes are downloaded locally to your phone to help you manage free space.

Free Adobe knows something about image editing, and the free Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 iPhone app gives you a taste of this expertise. While the app itself is free, you'll need the $4.99 upgrade for full functionality. All in all, Adobe Photoshop Express is a solid tool for making light photo edits on your iPhone.

Free Could your learning a new language somehow add value to other people all over the world? It's a strange idea, but one that's playing out when you use the free language learning Web app Duolingo (4 stars), which now has an iPhone app as well. As far as free, mobile apps for language-learning go, the Duolingo iPhone app is easily the best. A recent update makes your next lessons available offline, so you can continue learning even when you're not connected to the Internet.

FreeESPN's free app lets you check the game quickly, and discreetly when necessary (that is, with your phone under the dinner table), for your favorite teams in more sports than most other apps. It can pull game data from baseball, basketball, American football, the sport the rest of the world calls football (soccer, in the U.S.), ice hockey, cricket, rugby, and more.

Free Hyperlapse from Instagram is an app that works in tandem with the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app to give you the power to make time-lapsed (i.e., sped-up) videos. The app makes creating hyperlapse videos simpler than ever, although it also works as a video stabilizer, which is pretty neat, too. Hyperlapse is currently only available for iOS, and it's designed for both iPhone and iPad. It does only one thing, but it's impressive and fun to use.

FreeInstagram is a light photo editing and sharing app. Many of the camera filters that you can apply to images will give them a retro-hip style, but they're fun and can turn out some rather beautiful images with a little practice. It's fun to browse images that other people upload, too.

FreeNASA has released many iPhone apps, most of them with a specific focus (NASA Television, ISSLive, NASA Space Weather) but this app is the space agency's flagship app, and, in that role, it aggregates a wide range of NASA content. Space enthusiasts and curious minds will love how it packs a wealth of news stories, features, images, video, and information about the space agency's activities into this one mobile app.

$4.99 Snapseed is our Editors' Choice among iPhone camera apps for its non-destructive editing capabilities, powerful photo correction, localized adjustments, and many image-enhancing effects. Snapseed also works very well when it comes time to share photos, integrating with all the major social networks, and it sports a clear and innovative interface. Moreover, it's the only iPhone app that even approaches the power of desktop digital image editing software. At nearly $5, it's a bit more expensive than some other iPhone camera apps, but its power and features help it handily outshine the competition.

Free Beer enthusiasts the world over use the Untappd mobile app to keep track of what they drink and share tasting notes with others, which is a huge selling point for this app. Its poor user experience and middling search functionality, however, hold it back from app greatness. Nevertheless, it is the best beer search and logging app you'll find, with a great social network, too.

Free BillGuard connects you to your online credit card statements and flags merchants who frequently charge consumers for products or services they've either forgotten about or they didn't know they were requesting. BillGuard is smart because it has isolated one element of personal finance that can get lost in the noise of more robust applications.

Free LearnVest.com began as a personal finance education website for women. These days, it's less gender-specific and much more interactive, especially if you download the company's free iPhone app. The LearnVest app is a well-designed, comprehensive solution for monitoring your money, creating budgets, prioritizing your financial goals, and educating yourself about personal finance. It's easy to use largely because it connects directly to your financial accounts—savings, checking, credit cards, investment, you name it—and automatically pulls every line item of your income and expense history. It's similar to Mint, but more about financial education. If you want to read up on investment strategies, for example, LearnVest will be more your speed than Mint.

Free LevelUp is an iPhone (and Android) app that lets you make purchases using your credit card via QR codes that the app displays. Participating merchants simply scan the QR code on your screen using his or her own smartphone, which initiates a credit card transaction, and you're on your way. The fact that LevelUp doesn't require any special hardware, other than an iPhone (or Android phone), gives it a huge advantage over the other strong player in the mobile payment space, Google Wallet , which uses a near-field communication (NFC) chip to communicate with PayPass readers, installed on some credit card swipe machines at checkouts. And bonus: A lot of LevelUp merchants give you a discount if you use the app to pay.

Free The website and service Mint.com helps you keep detailed accounts of your finances by connecting to all your financial accounts (and then some) and tracking all the money you earn and spend. The Mint.com iPhone app extends the experience so users can keep an eye on their spending better while on the go. The app gives you deep insight into how you're spending your money and whether you're sticking to the budget you've created in Mint. It's one of the best personal finance apps you'll find.

Free More and more, I find myself relying on PayPal to quickly reimburse friends when they pick up the check and I don't have cash on hand to chip cover my share. The PayPal mobile app allows you to initiate payments no matter where you are. The app also has some shopping features so you can pay for goods and services without ever taking out your wallet at merchants that accept PayPal.

Free Square Wallet is a mobile payment app from a company called Square that makes another product/service, also known simply as Square, which small businesses can use to turn their iPads into credit card processing machines. Any merchant that uses Square can accept payments from wallet-less app-lovers, like myself, who carry Square Wallet on their iPhone (there's an Android app, too). What makes this app unique is it's available at a lot of small businesses, from boutique shops to independent coffee houses, unlike Google Wallet (only available on select Android devices, and only usable at retail location with a PayPass device), which is mostly supported in large, corporate chain stores.

$4.99 Bicycle tracking app Cyclemeter (for iPhone) collects a wealth of data, is very accurate, contains several well thought out features, and appeals to fitness enthusiasts who participate in more than one sport, which is why it's an Editors' Choice app. This $4.99 iPhone app maps and records your bicycle rides, then compiles all your data into excellent graphs. And despite its name, Cyclemeter doesn't just record cycling. Other activities, from cross-country skiing to running, come preloaded so at the touch of a button, you can leverage the app for more than one sport—an enormous benefit.

Free In a crowded market of fitness apps, the Johnson and Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout app is one of a few truly free apps that can help you break a quick sweat at an intensity level that's right for you. The interface is polished, and the instructions for quick workouts are clear. The real beauty of this app is that you can choose from a wide variety of workouts, some of which are quite challenging and much longer than seven minutes, and some of which are designed for beginners. I highly recommend the Johnson & Johnson 7 Minute Workout app for frequent travelers who need to squeeze in short workouts in hotel rooms, as the exercises require nothing more than a few square feet of space and a chair.

FreeThe free fitness app MyFitnessPal is one of the best all-in-one calorie counter and exercise trackers for the iPhone. A simple design and interface make using the app a quick chore rather than a fatiguing project, which is essential when trying to reach a long-term fitness or weight goal. The selling feature of this app is its exhaustive food and nutrition database, which trounces every competitor's that we've seen.

$4.99 Don't be fooled by Runtastic's name. Runtastic PRO isn't just for runners—it's for anyone who wants to track an activity, including cycling, hiking, skiing, kayaking, or just walking. Runtastic spits out a wealth of information about your activities and route. Maps of your route, for example, have mile markers on them, and you can pull up detailed charts to see your speed, pace, elevation, and more for each leg. When you wear a supported a heart rate monitor while using the app, the app will show you that data in your final outputs, too. Audio feedback, music integration, and much more make this one of the best running (and sports activity-tracking) apps.

Free; Premium account $6 per month or $59 per year Runners and cyclists who thrive on competition love the Strava app. After a major overhaul and release, this app is better than it was before. Whether you're competing against yourself to beat your best time, or looking at the long list of strangers who have smoked you on some nasty uphill stretch of your favorite route, Strava brings a fierce competitive angle.

Free; subscriptions for content $3.99 per month or $9.99 per year If you need someone to kick your butt into shape, MMA World Champion Georges St-Pierre may be the one to do it. His iPhone workout app, Touchfit: GSP, coaches you through a series of exercises for a total body workout. After each set, you "touch in" to tell the app whether it was easy, hard, very hard, or impossible to complete. The app uses that information to adjust your workout to make sure you're always challenged, but not pushed beyond your boundaries. You're sure to feel sore tomorrow.

FreeWebMD is much more than a diagnosis app, although you certainly can use it to input symptoms you are experiencing and find some clues as to what's ailing you. It also contains listings for healthcare professionals and pharmacies in your area, as well as first-aid guides—simple instructions for dealing with an emergency that everyone should have accessible to them at any time. This free reference app is one you hope you don't need, but the moment you do, you'll be glad you downloaded it.

Free With the beta release of the brand-new Digg Reader gone public, Digg has breathed new life into its iPhone app, notably by adding an RSS feed reader. The app is both speedy and responsive, with a lovely design and wonderful overall user experience.

$2.99 RSS reader Feedly delivers the content you want from your favorite websites into your iPhone. It's a full replacement to Google Reader that includes updates that you want from Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instapaper, and other sources around the Web. On the iPhone, Feedly looks great and works seamlessly with the Web app.

FreeFlipboard, an app initially designed for the iPad that curates content from your social networks and Web partners (think periodicals, blogs, etc.) based on your interests and turns them into stunning magazine-like digital pages, is now available on the iPhone. The app is free to download and requires a free user account. Flipboard absolutely shines on the iPad, taking advantage of swiping gestures with both visual and interactive grace, and on the iPhone, it's still elegant, but a little tight.

Free If Kindle and Nook don't tickle your fancy, Apple has its own little online bookstore where you can download and save novels, magazines, newspapers, and other reading material—and yes, many of the books and periodicals are free! iBooks, a personal digital library, works on iPad as well, so you can browse for books on the go from your phone and save them to read on the tablet later.

$2.99 If you read a lot, Instapaper helps you in two ways. First, it strips out some of the annoying ads, images, and extra junk on a Web page so that it's easier to read on a small screen. Second, it saves Web pages and content for you to read later by downloading a simplified version of them (again, stripped of junk). Read newspaper articles, blogs, and other online content, even when you don't have a signal, when they're saved to Instapaper.

Free Read books, magazines, and newspapers right on your iPhone without ever buying an e-reader. The Kindle app gives you access to buy or download for free hundreds of thousands of books, and more than 100 different newspapers and magazines.

Free Reeder is another RSS feed reader that works well on the iPhone. Like Feedly, Reeder provides a seamless experience when you're away from your desktop or laptop computer and want to keep tabs on what's happening online. The app lets you browse by feed or folders, manage starred items, mark pages as read or unread, and more.

FreeGateGuru (for iPhone) is an app to pack. It will help you navigate airports, anticipate wait times, find the freshest food, and travel with greater confidence. Imagine this grim scene: You have a three-hour layover and the unenviable dining choice between the bloated cinnamon bun and a greasy sports bar. Which is less likely to inflict damage on your stomach lining? GateGuru can help you avoid the plight of past LaGuardia travelers with its user-submitted reviews of services in the airport. It also has airport maps and checkpoint wait times will spare you from extending your tenure.

FreeThe Hipmunk iPhone app, a spinoff of the Hipmunk website is a travel booking app for flights and hotels. What makes Hipmunk unique is it incorporates accommodation options from alternative sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway, two services that let homeowners rent out their private real estate by the day or week.

Free For getting a deal on car rentals, Hotwire's iPhone app is actually amazingly useful, as long as you don't mind knowing which company you'll end up using. The good news is, you're guaranteed to get one of the major players. Hotwire is also decent with hotel search and booking, especially at the last minute, which is when you'd probably be using it on your phone anyway. It doesn't include flights or package deals, but for deals on car rentals and hotels, it's a winner.

99 cents (free version also available) Travel booking site Kayak is a wonderful multi-purpose travel app, helping you find and purchase flights, hotels, car rentals, and more. While there is a free version of the Kayak iPhone app, the Pro version is worth the dollar if you're an avid traveler. One of the perks: detailed maps of more than 100 airports.

FreeThe free app and website MenuPages keeps a database of restaurant menus, with prices included. If you've ever gritted your teeth at a restaurant's online menu that omits the prices, try MenuPages for unbiased information. Admittedly, MenuPages is not a great app for every location, but in major U.S. cities, it's awesome, especially when Yelp's recommendations seem skewed by college students who give five-star ratings to fast-food burgers and less-than-fresh sushi. With MenuPages, you can make your own decisions about a restaurant's dishes and prices. The app and website won't give you much insight into quality, but it will help you quickly weed out places that are too pricey or don't serve the kind of food you have in mind. It's also useful for ordering take-out.

OpenTable

Free OpenTable has long been a choice service for making dinner reservations without picking up the phone, and with iOS 8 and any iPhone with TouchID (the fingerprint sensor), the iPhone app now has a whole bunch of new features. You can not only make a restaurant reservation, but also pay for your meal at the end of it using Apple Pay. The redesigned interface makes use of the iPhone 6 Plus' extra-large size, too.

Free Travel-confirmation emails always contain way more information than you actually need to get out the door and to the airport on time. One app that can help you get organized when it comes to travel is TripCase. It does 90 percent of the work of culling and collating travel confirmations into one itinerary, resulting in a clear overview of your trip in chronological order, with flight details, hotel addresses, car rental reservation numbers, and more. It's quite similar to TripIt (listed next), except in how you import your data into the travel app. In TripCase, you forward emails to a special address. With TripIt, the service automatically grabs travel information from your emails for you.

Free; optional Pro service $49 per year The TripIt iPhone app is a lightweight front end for a powerful itinerary organizer. TripIt finds travel confirmations in your email accounts and collates them into concise itineraries. TripIt is a bit heady-handed on trying to upsell you on the Pro service, but the free app is still an excellent itinerary organizer. The app's greatest strength is the ease with which it gathers your reservation information, which would be difficult to replicate even with a carefully curated series of email folders.

FreeThe most comprehensive review app, Yelp turns out to be an invaluable tool for finding businesses nearby, especially when you're in a town you don't know well. Yelp's mobile app has helped me find a hairdresser when I was in a pinch in Washington DC, and a suitable lunch while driving through Ohio (shout-out to Moreland Hills!). Need to find an acupuncturist in Austin? Or the most popular coffee shop in Charlotte (emphasis on "popular" and not necessarily "best," by the way)? Yelp's the app to do it.